Print customers in business settings are always eager to share with me what they want from their printer partners – not in regards to the holiday season, but all year long.

Their wish list includes things that range from enhanced customer service to a deeper understanding of certain technologies and manufacturing processes. As the year nears its close, I’ve put together this list of the Top 5:

1. A better understanding of personalization applications and options available to them. Help your customers appreciate how easy variable data printing can be. What should they know about putting together the right types of data to be used in campaigns? Can you help? I’m being facetious. Of course you can.

2. Educational information throughout the year. This can be done in so many ways: seminars, lunch-n-learns (or breakfast meetings), after-work events, webinars, videos, valuable blogs or enewsletters. So many options. Pick one or two. Just do it.

3. Insights into new printing technologies and applications. Most print customers do not attend print industry events, and they’re not particularly proactive in learning about the latest manufacturing capabilities from industry web sites. It’s up to you to tell them what’s new.

4. Recommendations about how to make their print materials more effective. Give them ideas that will improve their jobs. Is it the process, the format, the substrate, the design – or literally the whole approach that needs to be rethought? What would you have them do differently so that the results are better? Do you even know what results they expect? I’m pretty sure once you know, you’ll have suggestions for improvement.

5. A relationship built on honesty, professionalism, and trust. Print customers want a lasting relationship with a printing company. It’s too much work and definitely too stressful to replace printers. If your capabilities and price points are both good matches for a customer, the rest is up to you. The people in your company who serve your customers are crucial in the world of print buying. Customers need to trust you. You need to be responsive. Qualities like integrity and honesty come up a lot in conversations with buyers. Without them, you’re doomed.

If you’re a printer, why not tackle any or all of these as your New Year’s resolution? They’ll help strengthen customer relationships, which leads to more business and more referrals.

I’ve discovered something interesting about commercial printers’ web sites: often it’s their page of Sample Products, AKA “Gallery,” that is most important.

Here’s why.

If the site copy elsewhere doesn’t make it clear to visitors what you’re really good at, and what types of printing you do, the Gallery Page can tell the story better than any words. And much faster.

This happens frequently. I land on a site and can’t tell what the company’s sweet spot is. Then I move to the Gallery page and think, Oh……NOW I get what they’re about.

I like seeing a variety of products on this page, plus a short description of each image (Chalkboard Printing, Floor Graphics, Posters, Catalogs, Variable Data, etc.). It gives me a good sense of the breadth of your offerings.

Based on this one page, I might decide if you’re a good fit for my business or not.

My hunch is that corporate and agency print customers (including marketers and purchasing pros) will do the same thing – zip on over to your product sample page and decide on the spot if a printer’s a good fit.

I’m not trying to dissuade customers from being loyal. Rather, I hope people recognize the value of testing the waters to see if they could get a better experience elsewhere.

It’s easy to move on if a current provider is not delivering the product or service to your liking. Something negative is propelling you out the door. I’ve switched doctors and other professionals, not because they weren’t qualified, but because of the experience. It was negative enough to make me leave.

I switched primary care physicians once, because my doctor consistently kept me waiting over an hour and never acknowledged it. I switched an eye doctor because the practice was run like an assembly line. I was passed from one eye technician to the next like a hot potato and then hustled out the door so the next spud could be handled.

A customer experience typically means how you treat your customers when they’re interacting with you. It’s what you say and how you say it. It can be subtle, but when it’s negative, it can trigger our search for your replacement.

What if you’ve been dealing with the same service provider forever? You’re comfortable, but (let’s be honest) you have nothing to compare it with. It’s still smart to check out the competition from time to time. This goes for commercial printers. How else will you know if there’s something incredible, or new, or both, that you’ve been missing? What if you could be treated better elsewhere?

Recently I took a few fitness classes at a different club than the one to which I belong.

The dance moves were the same.

The music was the same.

The instructor was the same.

But the experience was totally different. It was a combination of a few things, but taken together, they made the classes refreshing and fun and brand new for me – after all these years. Based on that experience, I joined the club. Experiencing working out in a new environment was a change I didn’t know I needed until I tried it, purely by chance.

So for any print customers reading this post, keep your eyes open. Visit new printers from time to time to see if the experience they can offer you is different in a positive way. Talk to some of their existing customers. Think of it as a test drive. Maybe you’ll find your current provider is still the best choice for you, and it’ll strengthen that relationship. But maybe you’ll uncover something that blows you away for any number of reasons, and you’ll make a switch, or add this printer to your group of providers. That’s what I did with the gym.

Printers reading this post should recognize the importance of customer experience. All things being equal, would your customers say that none of your competitors could beat the great experience you deliver?

Freelance blogging requires lots of reading and writing, but (thankfully for me) no arithmetic. I’ve developed my own blogging process. Here you go.

Discuss the topic with client. A phone conversation is preferred, as it lets me get all my questions asked – and answered – before I dig in. I need to understand what’s expected and who the audience is. I take notes as we chat.

Ponder the post. I think about the key points I want to make.

Do research. I take to the Internet to learn what I can about the subject, if I’m not familiar with it. This step is critical. I create a Word document just for this research, jotting down the URLs and key phrases or ideas that will be fodder for the post.

Ponder the post again. Looking at my client notes, my research notes, and my client’s website, I form the thesis in my mind.

Write. Now I’m ready to rock and roll. At this point, I know where I’m going with the post and have decided which points to make and when hyperlinks will help support my work. I suggest a few headlines, review my writing, and send it off to the client.

This works well for me. The research notes keep me honest and careful, and if the client wants to see them, I send them along. Some bloggers “dump” everything they know about a topic onto a clean Word document and whittle it down from there. I can’t work that way.